Sunday, March 31, 2013

Study this interview in light of current US actions verses North Korea, two months of upto 70,000 South Korean and US Military carrying out live fire provocations upto and within the Northern Limit a UN/US imposed sea border on North Korea which North Korea does not recognise.

Any nation anywhere on this planet would be outraged by these provocations but the North Korean's are painted has irrational by International media for standing up for their independence in the same way Iraq was presented as the problem a decade ago with the same lying media coverage.Salim Khalaf al- Jumayli says none in Iraq believed that the US would act irrationally - but history of the last 10 year have shown that the US did act irrationally and enhanced Al Qaeda and Iranian Power in Middle East by destroying Iraq.Who is the irrational rogue State the USA or North Korea ?

The US used every possibility to prove that Iraq was reluctant to cooperate in the war against terror, while it wasn’t, argues Salim Khalaf al-Jumayli, a former Iraqi intelligence officer, who made the revelation to RT.

Ten years after Iraq was occupied by the US, RT Arabic channel Rusiya Al-Yaum talked with a man who played a key role in getting intelligence to the Iraqi government right before the invasion. Their guest was General Salim Khalaf al-Jumayli, an Iraqi intelligence officer, former chief of the American desk of the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

RT:Mr. Salim, as an officer you destroyed all documents after the war was over. You burned them in a safe house near Baghdad. But I am sure there is still a lot of information that you committed to memory. Let’s start with the pretext that the US used to justify the invasion. They claimed that Iraq had ties with Al-Qaeda. Is it true or was it just a pretext?

Salim Khalaf al-Jumayli: Of course, America did everything to prepare public opinion inside the US and internationally for the war against Iraq. There were two major parts to this work: the US tried to convince everyone that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that it had close ties with Al-Qaeda and terrorists in general. In the 1980s, we did have certain relations with some organizations. But in the 1990s, we received orders to stop all contact with any organization that had terrorist connections. Talking about ties with Al-Qaeda, George Bush said that President Saddam Hussein had sent his envoys to meet with Osama bin Laden, but he never mentioned what the result of that meeting was. In 1992, after the war with Kuwait, Iraq was trying to restore relations with Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia. At that moment, Saudi Arabia was very anti-Iraq, and the President ordered to put all our efforts into changing that situation. We had to gather intelligence that could help us reach that goal. So we put more personnel in the Gulf countries department, and focused on Saudi Arabia. I was responsible for Syria at the time. We had connections with the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria, Adnan Uqla’s group. They had connections with Osama Bin Laden who was in Sudan at the time. That group offered to establish contacts with Bin Laden in order to work against Saudi Arabia. We got permission to establish that contact through the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, namely through a brother of Adnan Uqla, who was in an Arab country bordering with Iraq. We invited him to Baghdad, and I met with him at the Mansour Milia Hotel. I told him to get our message to Osama bin Laden. We all were against the American presence in Saudi Arabia. We had the same enemy, therefore we could work together undermining the Saudi regime and pressuring it to remove Americans from the Arabian Peninsula. This person went to Sudan with our message, there he met with Osama bin Laden. Then we got a reply from bin Laden – he said the Ba’ath regime in Iraq was apostate, and that it was because of the Iraqi regime that the Americans came to the Middle East, therefore he couldn’t have any contacts with this regime. There were other attempts to establish a connection, through Hassan al-Turabi for example. But Osama bin Laden’s position never changed. All of this happened before 1995, when he moved to Afghanistan and began to work against the Russian presence.

RT:Against the Najibullah regime…

SHJ: Americans also contacted bin Laden, they were the ones who transferred him to Afghanistan to fight against the Russians.

RT:If bin Laden refused to work with Saddam Hussein, does it then mean that it was the US who cooperated with al-Qaeda and not Iraq?

SHJ: I would not define it as cooperation though as it was later revealed they did have contacts. They coordinated their actions and supported al-Qaeda’s fight against the Russians in the Soviet Union. When Bush said that Saddam Hussein sent an envoy to bin Laden, he didn’t talk of the results of that mission. So formally his statement was true but in terms of the meaning he was wrong.

RT:So that’s about Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Now let’s talk a little bit about the weapons of mass destruction. Did Iraq really have these weapons as America claimed when it invaded the country?

SHJ: One more thing about Al-Qaeda. Before the war against Iraq, the US media talked a lot about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who allegedly was in Iraq and had connections with the Iraqi regime. I didn’t have any information about that. And since al-Zarqawi was from Jordan, I asked my colleague at the Jordan desk about that. He said that they had received reports from Jordan’s intelligence about Musab al-Zarqawi being sick and getting treatment at a hospital in Baghdad. He even told me that this hospital was in Bataween. We searched the area, but didn’t find Musab al-Zarqawi. So we had no connections with Musab al-Zarqawi or Al-Qaeda. There was an attempt to establish a connection with the Taliban through one of the ministers, who was in Pakistan. Iraqi intelligence proposed this, but Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz said that it was an unstable regime and it wouldn’t benefit Iraq to have relations with it.

RT:What about weapons of mass destruction? Did Iraq actually have WMD that could threaten the entire world or the region?

SHJ: They fabricated a certain problem, analyzed it and drew their conclusions based on that. The data they received from various sources wasn’t true. This was their attempt of swaying public opinion. In terms of the intelligence operation, Iraq was a closed country, and they obviously had no sources within the country that would’ve told them the truth. So they relied on other sources that fed them lies such as, for instance, photos of trucks, portable labs which according to their allegations were used for producing chemical weapons. They were actually used for checking food products supplied for the government. But they took photos of those labs and presented them as units for producing WMD.

RT:Mr. Salim, could you tell us as a counter-intelligence agent whether Iraq actually benefited from this powerful secrecy wall around it? Perhaps, had there been more transparency, and had the opponents known more about it and drew their conclusions based on that, there would not be such a perception of Iraq as an unknown power, like a dreadful black box?

SHJ: Certainly, a counter-intelligence agent’s work implies providing certain data to the opponents but you’re the one who should have it under control. From my experience, I am absolutely convinced, had the Americans had an Iraqi source that was telling them truth they wouldn’t have done what they did, in spite of having problems between the CIA and the National Security Advisor [Condoleezza Rice], who wanted to impose her opinion by making certain changes in the CIA reports. If only the CIA had a trustworthy and truthful information source within Iraq. So I’d like to stress again that in the counter-intelligence operation you should let the opponent have its sources inside your country, who you keep under control. You should ensure there’s a certain information leak to the extent you want to have it. Even if this source gets certain information, as it happened in our case, it’s better to let them learn it as the real situation meets our statements. We’ve always insisted that we didn’t have WMD.

Indeed, the Inspection Commissions lost their trust after particular documents were discovered at a fowl farm in a small area called Salman. They were the only ones we had but they didn’t believe it. Before the war, in our secret communication we confirmed that: they convinced the world in the need of entering Iraq in order to resolve two major issues, WMD and ties with Al-Qaeda. But what would they tell the world if they invaded Iraq and didn’t find WMD or ties with Al-Qaeda? You may have noticed that the entire talk was held in a different key. After a while, they changed the entire plan and said they were pursuing democratic goals in Iraq. And once chaos began in Iraq they called it ‘constructive’. Chaos seized the entire Arabic region. In their strategy they believed that America would rule this whole area once they overthrew Saddam Hussein; but it actually worked out the opposite way when chaos seized the entire area.

RT:As I understand, you had contacts or cooperation with the US political bodies or Intelligence?

SHJ: No, we had contacts in the US Administration via American intermediaries of Lebanese origin. We exchanged letters. So we had no contacts with the US political bodies or intelligence services. We wanted to have a meeting with the CIA or anyone in the US administration to explain the situation to them explicitly but we never succeeded.

RT:Were you prepared for cooperation with the international community, for instance, with Europe or the US in then counter-terrorism area?

SHJ: We were, and we sent a number of letters on that matter. In 1993, a truck full of explosives drove into the World Trade Center. That attack was developed and executed by an Iraqi American who came from Samarra, Iraq. This man fled back to Iraq following the attack. The US intelligence followed him and reported that he arrived at Iraq so we started looking for him. It took us six months before we found him working at a car workshop. The Iraqi intelligence detained him and put him to jail. We delivered a letter saying that we had crucial information on the executor of the WTC attack, and Iraqi American, and that we were willing to cooperate in order to pass this information over to them. Their reply was that we should pass this information to them in writing, and refused to meet with us. At the same time, they promised a $25mln reward to anyone who’d inform them of that individual or his whereabouts. They realized we had him, and that we informed them about it.

Two Months of Drills and Mock Attacks by up to 70,000 US and South Korean troops on DPRK in the Northern Limit Line are not seen as a provocation by Western media.

The map above shows the "Northern Limit Line" (NLL). The line was unilaterally set by the US led United Nations military forces on August 30, 1953.

It is not officially recognized by DPRK (North Korea).

In particular, it is not included into the Armistice Agreement of 1953.

The line was originally drawn to prevent southern incursions into the north – however its role has since transformed to prevent DPRK ships heading south.

Democracy and Class Struggle says any country on this planet would object to large scale live fire exercises within 12 miles of its border. This is a deliberate provocation. Chuck Hagel US Defence Secretary denies this is a provocation. I therefore respectfully suggest that North Korean carry out live fire exercises within 12 miles of the US West Coast has I am absolutely certain that Chuck Hagel would regard that as a provocation justifying war.

It should come as no surprise to many of you to find out that Monsanto actually authored the wording of its own Monsanto Protection Act hidden in the recently passed and signed Continuing Resolution spending bill. How could a major corporation write its own laws and regulations, you ask?

Western Media consistently distorts North Korea's image, this also includes Western Left Media. Russian media have a different view, which we show above.

While we may have criticisms of North Korea they are secondary to our primary stand which is in support of North Korean independence against Imperialist Aggression from United States and its Puppet on a String Park Geun-hye.

Those people who say they believe in national independence and socialism but support US Imperialism against North Korea are socialists in words but imperialists in deeds - social imperialists.

Friday, March 29, 2013

US and South Korea's Live Fire Drills are provocations and anger North Korea.

We need to get the word out that the US and South Korea need to stop the provocative "military exercises" that they conduct.

70,000 US and South Korean troops are currently conducting military
manoeuvres on the Korean Peninsula, as part of the annual Foal Eagle exercise.

And the B-2 stealth bomber stunt is reckless.

Democracy and Class Struggle says any country on this planet would object to large scale live fire exercises within 12 miles of its border. This is a deliberate provocation. Chuck Hagel US Defence Secretary denies this is a provocation. I therefore respectfully suggest that North Korean carry out live fire exercises within 12 miles of the US West Coast has I am absolutely certain that Chuck Hagel would regard that as a provocation justifying war.

Condemn the cold blooded killing of ten Maoist cadres in a joint covert

operation by the police and TPC in Chatra, Jharkhand!

Release the twenty persons abducted by TPC immediately and without harm!

Constitute a judicial enquiry into the killing and punish the perpetrators!

29 March 2013

The media has reported the claim made by the Jharkhand police that ten CPI (Maoist) cadres were gunned down by the Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) during a “fierce gun battle” that started in the afternoon of 27 March 2013 and continued till the next morning in the Lakarbandha forests in Chatra district of Jharkhand, which falls under Kunda police station limits. Around 25 other Maoists have been abducted after the battle as per media reports. Lalesh Yadav alias Prashant, Secretary of the Bihar Jharkhand North Chhattisgarh Special Area Committee of CPI (Maoist), Jaikumar Yadav, Platoon Commander, Dharmendra Yadav alias Biru, Sub-Zonal Commander of Chatra Palamu, and Prafulla Yadav, Sub-Zonal Commander of Koleswari are reported to be among the dead.

According to the police version of the incident, it had received information about an ongoing gun battle between the CPI (Maoist) cadres and TPC members in the evening of 27 March. Around a hundred armed men of CoBRA battalion of the CRPF and District Armed Police left at 10pm on the same evening, who reached the site of the encounter at 3am in the morning. The paramilitary and police forces engaged in a gunfight from 3 to 4 am in which they fired 80 to 90 rounds of bullets. By daybreak, the police claims, the belligerent CPI(Maoist) and TPC cadres retreated from the spot. During a search of the area, the police is said to have recovered ten bodies of CPI (Maoist) members, nine in uniform, along with seven weapons, cane bombs, empty cartridges and Maoist literature from the encounter site. Though the police have said that two TPC members died as well, the bodies of the supposedly dead TPC members have not been recovered by the police.

CPI(Maoist), however, has refuted the police story. A spokesperson of the party in his telephonic statement to the PUCL Jharkhand told that there was no encounter or gun battle as claimed by the police. According to him, it was a joint operation planned and executed by the central paramilitary forces and state police in collusion with the TPC. The state armed forces and the TPC used covert operatives to mix poison in the food served to the Maoists. When they were in an unconscious state after consuming the poisoned food, their arms were first taken away and then were selectively killed by the TPC and the armed forces. The rest of the 20 to 25 Maoists were later abducted and taken away by the TPC men. The spokesperson also confirmed that the four leaders named by the media are among the dead. The spokesperson has also confirmed that there were 200 armed personnel in the operation from TPC and paramilitary and Jharkhand police.

The facts and circumstances of the incident, the modus operandi of the state’s armed forces and the history of the notorious TPC in Jharkhand indeed point strongly towards a covert operation, a staged ‘encounter’ and cold blooded murder of the ten Maoists. It is difficult to believe that ten members in a large team of 30 odd armed Maoists fell in a gun battle while none of the TPC goons or the armed forces engaging them survived without any casualty. The police itself have admitted that none of their troops sustained even injuries. The claim by the police that two TPC members were killed and one was injured in the ‘encounter’ is highly doubtful, given the fact that the police did not recover the bodies of the TPC members. In spite of the contrary claims by the government, the collusion between the Jharkhand police, the paramilitary forces and the TPC in conducting operations against the Maoists is well known. Therefore, it can be assumed that the state’s armed forces had full knowledge of the Maoist team’s presence in Lakarbandha forest, and that they directed and participated in this dastardly covert operation from the beginning to the end. TPC as a mercenary vigilante gang propped up by the government was one of the instruments in executing this extrajudicial killing.

This is not the first time that covert and deceptive means of poisoning was used by the Indian state to eliminate Maoist leaders and cadres by planting moles and informers. Three Central Committee members of the erstwhile CPI(ML) Peoples’ War – Shyam, Mahesh and Murli – were first poisoned by using an informer in Bangalore, abducted and flown to Andhra Pradesh, tortured and later shot dead in December 1999. Then the police floated the story that the three were killed in an ‘encounter’ in Karimnagar district of AP. A villager residing near the so-called encounter site was also picked up and killed by the police and shown as a squad member to bolster their Goebblesian lie. The demand by the civil rights organisations and democratic forces for a judicial enquiry into the incident was declined by the government. The guilty police officers and their political bosses are yet to be brought to book for this fascist murder, and indeed enjoy full state protection.

Similarly, Chhattisgarh police claimed to have killed 14 members of a Maoist squad in Bijapur district on 18 March 2008 after a ‘fierce encounter’, even though not a single policeman was even injured as a result. The villagers who were eyewitnesses later told the media and civil rights organisations that the police story of the ‘encounter’ was to cover up the fact that the squad members were poisoned by using spies and killed. The government and the police have never acknowledged this covert and cold blooded mass murder, and rather hailed it as “the biggest ever counter-insurgency operation in the state”. These are just two of the innumerable instances of fascist murder by the state’s forces against the revolutionary movement using spies, coverts and vigilante gangs, and then boasting of shooting down revolutionary leaders, cadres, sympathisers and civilians in ‘heroic’ battles. The latest killing of ten Maoists in Chatra district of Jharkhand points to a similar cold blooded murder for which the Indian state and its armed forces are equally responsible as its foot-soldiers – the TPC. This covert operation smacks of the fascist former CRPF boss K Vijay Kumar’s involvement, who is presently the advisor to the governor of Jharkhand and virtually running the home ministry in the state which is presently under President’s rule.

TPC was formed by renegades of the CPI(Maoist) after deserting the party in 2001. The Indian state, its armed forces and intelligence agencies were instrumental in its formation and continued presence in Chatra, Latehar and Ranchi districts. TPC has established a reign of terror in these districts, indulging in killings, kidnapping, extortion and torture – all under the patronage of the state and its armed forces. It has particularly targeted the revolutionary organisations and their mass base during the twelve years of its existence. This is because TPC considers the revolutionary masses and their movement as the biggest impediment for its expansion, which is coterminous with the safeguarding the political power of the reactionary ruling classes comprising of the feudal forces and the comprador big bourgeoisie.

TPC is only one of the vigilante gangs run by the ruling classes. In Jharkhand itself, the Indian state has promoted other fascist execution squads which go by the names of Jharkhand Prastuti Committee, Shanti Sena. There is hardly any difference between TPC of Jharkhand and the Salwa Judum of Chhattisgarh, Ranvir Sena of Bihar, Sendra and Narsi Cobra of Andhra Pradesh, Shanti Sena of Odisha, Ikhwan of Kashmir and Sulfa of Asom. They are all sponsored, nurtured and used by the Indian state to crush the democratic and revolutionary movements of the oppressed peoples and nationalities. Only, TPC claims itself to be a ‘Maoist’ group, and the state too conveniently portrays them as such!

RDF demands that a judicial enquiry be immediately conducted to enquire into the killing of ten Maoists in Chatra, Jharkhand, so that the facts of the incident can be brought to light and those guilty of this cold blooded murder be brought to book. We also believe that the lives of the twenty people kidnapped by the TPC are in danger. Whether they are presently in the custody of the TPC or the police, all measures must be taken to save their lives. All of them must be produced before a magistrate immediately. In addition, TPC must be disbanded without delay, and the Indian state must stop its patronization of vigilante gangs in the country, including TPC in Jharkhand.

This is an interview in USA given by Brendan Behan during height of McCarthy anti Communist hysteria in 1950's, hence the comment about Lenin.

Brendan Francis Behan (pron.:/ˈbiːən/BEE-ən; Irish: Breandán Ó Beacháin; 9 February 1923 – 20 March 1964) was an Irish poet, short story writer, novelist, and playwright who wrote in both English and Irish. He was also an Irish republican and a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. Born in Dublin into a republican family, he became a member of the IRA's youth organisation Fianna Éireann at the age of fourteen. However, there was also a strong emphasis on Irish history and culture in the home, which meant he was steeped in literature and patriotic ballads from a tender age. Behan eventually joined the IRA at sixteen, which led to him serving time in a borstal youth prison in the United Kingdom and was also imprisoned in Ireland. During this time, he took it upon himself to study and he became a fluent speaker of the Irish language. Subsequently released from prison as part of a general amnesty given by the Fianna Fáil government in 1946, Behan moved between homes in Dublin, Kerry and Connemara and also resided in Paris for a period.

A new comprehensive documentary on the life of James Connolly. The film traces Connolly's life from his childhood in the appalling squalor of the Cowgate slums in Edinburgh to the tragedy of his execution in Kilmainham in May 1916.
James Connolly.

A Working Class Hero is the fullest account of a man who worked single-mindedly for a decent, just and free life for workers everywhere.

The film reveals how Connolly was unique among his comrades, a self-taught scholar, a Socialist, a Marxist and the outstanding Labour leader of Ireland.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

It cannot be denied that the past casts a long shadow over us all, and those repressed memories that have not been dealt with will continue to haunt the collective memory of a people until they have been addressed. Perhaps this is why a particularly dark chapter in the history of South America--the "Operation Condor" kidnappings and assassinations of the 1970s and 1980s--has come to the surface once again in two completely separate separate incidents, in the past few weeks.

General Carlos Prats, who immediately preceded Pinochet at the head of the Chilean army, assassinated in Buenos Aires in 1974

William Beausire, businessman with dual British and Chilean nationality, abducted in transit in Buenos Aires airport in November 1974, taken to the Villa Grimaldi torture centre in Chile and never seen since [6].

Jorge Zaffaroni and Maria Emilia Islas de Zaffaroni, maybe members of the Tupamaros, "disappeared" in Buenos Aires on 29 September, 1976, kidnapped by the Batallón de Inteligencia 601, who handed them out to the Uruguayan OCOAS (Organismo Coordinador de Operaciones Anti-Subversivas)[76]

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Democracy and Class Struggle says in view of current developments on The Korean Peninsula, we are revisiting the Taejon Massacre carried out by South Korean Troops which was blamed on North Korea, in fact the US made a film at the time with Humphrey Bogart called Crime of Korea blaming the Communists.

Alan Winnington a journalist who exposed the truth of this South Korean atrocity at the time was the subject of discussion of the British Cabinet for High Treason - the truth was high treason in 1950.He had his British Passport withdrawn and not allowed to return to UK.Will the truth about US activities in Korea be treason in 2013 ?As for Taejon, a massacre undoubtedly occurred, but what precisely happened, when and who was responsible remain to be settled. The first published references to the massacre appeared in an article in the English communist paper, the Daily Worker, dated 9 August 1950. [49]Its correspondent, Alan Winnington, accompanying the (Northern) Korean People's Army on their march southwards, reported having inspected mass graves at a village called 'Rangwul' near Taejon, which is about 160 kilometres south of Seoul. [50]He concluded from inspection of the graves, photographic evidence and discussions with villagers in the vicinity, that approximately 7000 prisoners from the gaols of Taejon and nearby had been summarily executed at that spot between 6 and 21 July (when the area was captured by the KPA), and buried in mass graves dug by locally press-ganged peasants.His report was reproduced in a pamphlet, I Saw the Truth in Korea, which so distressed the British Cabinet that serious consideration was given to trying him for treason (sic). [51] Except in the sense of the outrage they provoked in London, Winnington's allegations, repeated in his posthumously-published autobiography, were never treated seriously, were never investigated, and were not mentioned in the subsequent United States Army report.As it happened, the two Australian officers who earlier had constituted the UNCOK Field Observer team, Major Peach and Wing Commander Rankin, were in the Taejon area at the precise time that Winnington concluded the massacre must have taken place, acting as liaison officers between the United Nations and south Korean forces.On 9 July (according to Peach's 1950 dispatch), he and Rankin were on the 'road from Taejon to Konju . . . along the Kum River, a few miles short of Konju'. Trucks loaded with prisoners were going south before the northern advance.'52 As Peach later recalled the incident: 'Before my very eyes I saw at least two or three killed, their heads broken like eggs with the butts of rifles. [53]Later, in Konju, he was told that prisoners from the Konju gaol were being shot. [54] Peach reported details to the South Korean Home Minister but believed that nothing was done. A contemporary photograph in the London Picture Post shows a truckload of such prisoners on the banks of the Kum River about halfway between Seoul and Pusan 'on their way to execution'. [55]They were described as 'South Korean suspected traitors'. Four days later, on 13 July, the northern forces crossed the Kum River, and on 20 July captured Taejon. When Winnington reached Taejon, the city was still burning. The sequence of events strongly suggests that Winnington, Peach and Rankin were all witnesses to different stages of the same terrible event.There was one further witness, whose testimony strengthens the suspicion. Philip Deane, in 1950 correspondent for the London Observer, was told this story while in a prison camp in north Korea after his capture, of a massacre in Tacjon just before the town fell to the communists. His informant was a French priest, Father Cadars, and Cadars' veracity seemed beyond dispute. Deane wrote as follows:'[Fr Cadars] told me that just before the Americans retreated from the town, South Korean police had brought into a forest clearing near his church 1700 men, loaded layer upon layer into trucks. These prisoners were ordered out and ordered to dig long trenches. Father Cadars watched. Some American officers, Cadars said were also watching. When a certain amount of digging was complete, South Korean policemen shot half the prisoners in the back of the neck. The other half were then ordered to bury the dead. [56]After Father Cadars' protest was dismissed, the remainder were likewise killed. He was told they were 'Communist guerrillas who rebelled in the Taejon gaol'.Unless, by some terrible fate, there were two massacres in the Taejon vicinity-the one described by Winnington and Cadars which occurred in July and was perpetrated by the Rhee forces, and the one which is described by the United States Army as having occurred in late September and having been comitted by the KPA-it is hard to avoid the suspicion that the events witnessed by all these men were aspects of the same unfolding massacre.In 1992, however, more than 40 years after the events occurred, a full account was published for the first time in a South Korean monthly journal. [57] What Winnington wrote was confirmed (except for some discrepancy in the numbers involved) by eyewitnesses and men who had actually taken part in the massacre. The only matter which remained unclear was whether Americans had been directly involved or not.We now know, therefore, that the atrocity which the United States Army describes as the worst of the war, ranking with the Rape of Nanking and Belsen, was committed by forces acting in the name of the United Nations.[58]

References:

··149 'US Belsen in Korea: Americans Drove Women to Pits of Death', Daily Worker, 9 August 1950.·150 The village, though pronounced as Winnington wrote it, should actually be written as 'Nangwul'.·151 Jon Halliday, 'Anti-Communism and the Korean War (1950-1953)' in Socialist Register, eds Ralph Miliband, John Saville and Marcel Liebman, London, 1984, pp. 130-63, at p. 146·152 Extract from the Peach report contained in Dispatch by A.B. Jamieson, 2 August 1950, in Australian Mission in Tokyo to Canberra, 10 August 1950, AA 3123/5, part 4·153 Interview, Sydney, 14 August 1982·154 Rankin confirmed this account in a 12 August 1982 interview with this author by referring to his 1950 diary.·155 'War in Korea', by journalist Stephen Simmons and cameraman Haywood Magee, Picture Post, vol. 48, no. 5, 29 July 1950, p. 17. The caption to the photograph described the incident as one 'which has been investigated by a United Nations observer'.·156 Philip Deane, Captive in Korea, London, 1953, p. 83. The 1953 United States Army report locates the headquarters of the north Korean forces it alleged were responsible for the September massacre 'in the Catholic mission' in Taejon.·157 No Ka-Won, 'Taejon hyong-mu-so sa-chon san-baek myong hak-sal sa-kon' (The massacre of 4300 men from the Taejon prison), Mal, February 1992, pp. 122-31. I am grateful to Chung Kyung-Mo for bringing this material to my attention, and to Kim Hong-Ja for translating it into Japanese.·158 Cumings, 1990, p. 700 refers also to American internal evidence' which corroborated Winnington, though giving the figure of 2,000~4,000 rather than 7,000 victimsSource : http://www.iacenter.org/Koreafiles/ktc-lone-mccormack.htm

US political leaders and media pundits trumpet North Korea’s recent testing of missiles and nuclear weapons as a great threat. But the US mass media do not tell the whole story. Without the context of history and current events, the actions of North Korea look insane, but when put in context we find that the United States is pushing North Korea on this path. North Korea is really not a significant threat compared to what the United States is doing with nuclear weapons, the Asia Pivot and war games off the Korean coast. In this article, we seek greater understanding by putting ourselves in the place of North Korea.

Historical Context: Korea, a Pawn for Big Power, Brutalized by the United States

The history between Korea and the United States goes back to the late 1800s when the US had completed its manifest destiny across North America and was beginning to build a global empire. In 1871, more than 700 US marines and sailors landed on Kanghwa beach in west Korea, seeking to begin US colonization (a smaller US invasion occurred in 1866). They destroyed five forts, inflicting as many as 650 Korean casualties. The US withdrew, realizing it would need a much larger force to succeed, but this was the largest military force to land outside the Americas until the 1898 war in the Philippines. S. Brian Willson reports that this invasion is still discussed in North Korea, but it has been erased from the history in South Korea as well as in the United States.

Korea succumbed to Japanese rule beginning in 1905, often serving as a pawn between Japanese conflicts with China and Russia. This was a brutal occupation. A major revolt for Korean democracy occurred on March 1, 1919, when a declaration of independence was read in Seoul. Two million Koreans participated in 1,500 protests. The Koreans also appealed to major powers meeting in Versailles after World War I, but were ignored as Japan was given control over the East. The Japanese viciously put down the democracy movement. Iggy Kim, in Green Left, reports they “beheaded children, crucified Christians and carried out scores of other atrocities. More than 7,500 people were killed and 16,000 were injured.”

Near the end of World War II, as Japan was weakened, Korean “People’s Committees” formed all over the country and Korean exiles returned from China, the US and Russia to prepare for independence and democratic rule. On September 6, 1945, these disparate forces and representatives of the people’s committees proclaimed a Korean People’s Republic (the KPR) with a progressive agenda of land reform, rent control, an eight-hour work day and minimum wage among its 27-point program.

But the KPR was prevented from becoming a reality. Instead, after World War II and without Korean representation, the US quite arbitrarily decided with Russia, China and England, to divide Korea into two nations “temporarily” as part of its decolonization. The powers agreed that Japan should lose all of its colonies and that in “due course” Korea would be free. Korea was divided on the 38th parallel. The US made sure to keep the capital, Seoul, and key ports. Essentially, the US took as much of Korea as it thought the Russians would allow. This division planted the seeds of the Korean War, causing a five-year revolution and counter-revolution that escalated into the Korean War.

Initially, the South Koreans welcomed the United States, but US Gen. John Hodge, the military governor of South Korea working under Gen. Douglas MacArthur, quickly brought Koreans who had cooperated with the Japanese during occupation into the government and shut out Koreans seeking democracy. He refused to meet with representatives of the KPR and banned the party, working instead with the right wing Korean Democratic Party – made up of landlords, land owners, business interests and pro-Japanese collaborators.

Shut out of politics, Koreans who sought an independent democratic state took to other methods and a mass uprising occurred. A strike against the railroads in September 1946 by 8,000 railway workers in Pusan quickly grew into a general strike of workers and students in all of the South’s major cities. The US military arrested strike leaders en masse. In Taegu, on Oct. 1, huge riots occurred after police smashed picket lines and fired into a crowd of student demonstrators, killing three and wounding scores. In Yongchon, on Oct. 3, 10,000 people attacked the police station and killed more than 40 police, including the county chief. Some 20 landlords and pro-Japanese officials were also killed. A few days later, the US military declared martial law to crush the uprising. They fired into large crowds of demonstrators in numerous cities and towns, killing and wounding an unknown number of people.

Syngman Rhee, an exile who had lived in the US for 40 years, was returned to Korea on MacArthur’s personal plane. He initially allied with left leaders to form a government approved of by the US. Then in 1947, he dispensed with his “left” allies by assassinating their leaders, Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-Shik. Rhee consolidated power and the US pushed for United Nations-sponsored elections in May 1948 to put a legal imprimatur on the divided Koreas. Rhee was elected at 71 years old in an election boycotted by most parties who saw it as sham. He came to power in the midst of an insurgency.

On Jeju Island, the largest Korean island lying in a strategic location in the Korea Strait, there continued to be protests against the US military government. It was one of the last areas where people’s committees continued to exist. Gen. Hodge told Congress Jeju was “a truly communal area that is peacefully controlled by the People’s Committee,” but he organized its extermination in a scorched-earth attack. In September, Rhee’s new government launched a massive counterinsurgency operation under US command. S. Brian Willson reports it resulted in the killing of “60,000 Islanders, with another 40,000 desperately fleeing in boats to Japan.

Thus, one-third of its residents were either murdered or fled during the ‘extermination’ campaign. Nearly 40,000 homes were destroyed and 270 of 400 villages were leveled.” It was an ugly attack, Iggy Kim notes: “Torture, mutilation, gang rape and arbitrary execution were rife. . . a quarter of the Jeju population had been massacred. The US embassy happily reported: ‘The all-out guerilla extermination campaign came to a virtual end in April with order restored and most rebels and sympathizers killed, captured, or converted.’” This was the single greatest massacre in modern Korean history and a warning of what was to come in the Korean War. As we will see, Jeju is part of the story in today’s US Asian escalation.

More brutality occurred on mainland Korea. On October 19, dissident soldiers in the port city of Yosu rose up in opposition to the war in Jeju. About 2,000 insurgent soldiers took control of the city. By Oct. 20, a number of nearby towns had also been liberated and the People’s Committee was reinstated as the governing body. People’s courts were established to try police officers, landlords, regime officials and other supporters of the Rhee dictatorship. This rebellion was suppressed by a bloodletting, planned and directed by the US military.

“The Korean War that lasted from June 1950 to July 1953 was an enlargement of the 1948-50 struggle of Jeju Islanders to preserve their self-determination from the tyrannical rule of US-supported Rhee and his tiny cadre of wealthy constituents. Little known is that the US-imposed division of Korea in 1945 against the wishes of the vast majority of Koreans was the primary cause of the Korean War that broke out five years later. The War destroyed by bombing most cities and villages in Korea north of the 38th Parallel, and many south of it, while killing four million Koreans – three million (one-third) of the north’s residents and one million of those living in the south, in addition to killing one million Chinese. This was a staggering international crime still unrecognized that killed five million people and permanently separated 10 million Korean families.”

Bragging about the massacre, USAF Strategic Air Command head General Curtis LeMay, who blanket-bombed Japan in World War II and later ran for vice president with segregationist George Wallace, summed it up well, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.” Willson corrects LeMay, writing “it is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8-9 million people during the 37-month long ‘hot’ war, 1950-1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to belligerence of another.”

This historical context results in North Korea taking the threats of the United States very seriously. It knows the US has been willing to kill large portions of its population throughout history and has seen what the US has done to other countries.

In 2002, President George W. Bush labeled North Korea part of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and Iran. S. Brian Willson traveled 900 ground miles through six of North Korea’s nine provinces, as well as Pyongyang, the capital, and several other cities, talking with dozens of people from all walks of life; all wanted to know about the “axis of evil” speech. He found that North Koreans “simply cannot understand why the US is so obsessed with them.”

Of course, the North Korean government witnessed the “shock and awe” campaign of bombardments against Iraq and the killing of at least hundreds of thousands (credible research shows more than 1 million Iraqis killed, 4.5 million displaced, 1-2 million widows and 5 million orphans). They saw the brutal killing by hanging of the former US ally, now turned into an enemy, Saddam Hussein.

And, they can look to the experience of Libya. Libya was an enemy but then began to develop positive relations with the US. In 2003, Libya halted its program to build a nuclear bomb in an effort to mend its relations with the US. Then last year Libya was overthrown in a US-supported war and its leader Moammar Gadhafi was brutally killed. As Reuters reports, “‘The tragic consequences in those countries which abandoned halfway their nuclear programs… clearly prove that the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) was very far-sighted and just when it made the (nuclear) option,’ North Korea’s KCNA news agency said.”

US troops and bases are not popular. Protests erupted in 2002 after two Korean woman were killed and a court martial found the US soldiers not guilty of negligent manslaughter. Several pubs and restaurants put up signs saying “Americans Not Welcome Here.” In an August 2005 protest against US troops by 1,100 people, 10 were injured by police. One month before that, 100 were injured in a protest. In 2006 protesters occupied land on which the US planned to expand a base, resulting in a conflict and their eviction followed by installing barbed wire around the area to protect it from South Koreans. The South Korean government banned a rally that was expected to draw more than 10,000 protesters.

• South Korean officials began talking of Kim Jong-il’s death as a prime opportunity to pursue a regime-change strategy.

• South Korea unveiled a new cruise missile that could launch a strike inside North Korea and is working fast to increase its full-battery range to strike anywhere inside North Korea.

• South Korea openly began discussing asymmetric warfare against North Korea.

• The US military’s Key Resolve Foal Eagle computerized war simulation games suddenly changed, too, simulating the deployment of 100,000 South Korean troops on North Korean territory following a regime change.

• Japan was brought on board, allowing the US to deploy a second advanced missile defense radar system on its territory and the two carried out unprecedented war games.

• It is also not lost on anyone that despite what on the surface appears to be the US’complete lack of interest in a new South Korean naval base that is in the works, this base will essentially serve as an integrated missile defense system run by the US military and housing Aegis destroyers.”

North Korea has shown anger at these drills. In response to the announcement of the largest annual joint exercises for US and South Korean troops scheduled for March and April of this year, in a rare direct message to US Gen. James Thurman, North Korea warned the top American commander in South Korea on Feb. 23 of “miserable destruction” if the US military presses ahead with the joint drills with South Korea set to begin next month.

Add to these drills the “Asia Pivot” President Obama is implementing, which will result in 60 percent of the US Navy being moved to Asia, and one can understand why North Korea believes that it is necessary to have nuclear weapons. Part of this Asia Pivot includes Jeju Island, where the US military is trying to install a massive Navy base. The village of Gangjeong, where the base is to be built, and the elected assembly of Jeju Island have voted to stop the naval base construction. The people of Jeju have mounted protests and resistance efforts against the base. But the base is a key location for the Asia Pivot. Jeju faces Shanghai across the East China Sea, the South China Sea lies south of the island, and the mainland of South Korea lies to the north.

Beyond that, as S. Brian Willson points out, the US is remaking its nuclear arsenal so that nuclear weapons can be used in a war. Three weeks before his “Axis of Evil” speech, President Bush presented a “Nuclear Posture Review” report to Congress that ordered the Pentagon to prepare contingency plans for use of nuclear weapons. The first designated targets for nuclear attack were the “axis of evil” members – along with Syria, Libya, Russia, and China. The US remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons against another nation. The US has approximately 5,113 nuclear warheads, including tactical, strategic, and non-deployed weapons. According to the latest official New START Treaty declaration, the United States actively positions 1,722 strategic nuclear warheads on 806 deployed ICBMs, SLBMs, and strategic bombers.

While calling for a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama has instead continued Bush’s plan and has increased the budget for nuclear weapons. He has been giving the nuclear arsenal a massive and costly overhaul, modernizing the land-sea-air combination of planes, submarines and missiles that deliver nuclear bombs and warheads. Obama made a commitment in a letter to the Senate in February 2011 to accelerate, “to the extent possible,” the design and engineering of a new plutonium facility at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico while sustaining a facility in Tennessee. What would a North Korean leader think of all this?

And when it comes to talks with North Korea, there is no progress. As our guests on “Clearing the FOG” – Bruce Gagnon and Elliot Adams, both active with Veterans for Peace – pointed out: China encourages talks, but the US refuses. Gagnon and Adams suggest a first step would be a peace treaty with North Korea – an end to the Korean War, something that was never agreed because the fighting ended in a truce. The US needs to stop boxing North Korea into a corner with escalating rhetoric, military actions off its coast and crippling sanctions, and allow North Korea into the community of nations.

Once again, Korea is a pawn in a bigger battle between the US and China and Russia. Countries like Australia and Japan have joined the US and NATO, which has also been brought into the Asian Pivot. As Gagnon points out, North Korea is very independent and does not want to be anyone’s puppet and feels it must always show it is ready to defend itself. Adams adds, the US military does not fear “pipsqueak” North Korea with their low tech missiles and bombs, but in the media they use every test by North Korea as an excuse to escalate. Adams clarifies, “the US military needs a bogeyman to justify spending 60 percent of US discretionary spending on an insane, incompetent and bloated military.”

The solution begins with the American people understanding what is really going on in Asia and the Koreas. When the context is examined, and Americans try to stand in the shoes of North Korea, a different picture emerges. This is not easy with the misinformation and inadequate reporting by the mass media, which is complicit with the escalation, but this contextual understanding is essential as the US increases military action in Asia, threatens China and uses North Korea as an excuse.

You can hear our interview with Bruce Gagnon and Elliott Adams on North Korea, Nuclear Weapons and US Expansion into Asia and Space on Clearing the FOG Radio (podcast).